Author: Michael Tresoikas

Group: Meghan, and Sam

In this group discussion, I talked to the leader of the group and explained what we learned from the past semester and how it has impacted us. We talked about how the readings were harder to comprehend at times but it was a good learning experience to take to other classes. We like the topics that were used for each project because for some of them, as students we really agree with them and want a change. We liked how we could use problems that we agreed with and actually write about the problems. Having this course impacted all of us positively and we are glad that we were able to take the course.  We also explained how it was hard in the beginning but as the semester went on, it became easier to write and understand the topics for the readings.

Do you think the writing groups helped understand the material, and do you think that they can be changed in any way. Also did the writing class help build off of what you already know for writing?

Location: Sykes entrance/ sitting area.

Time: 9:00 am

Michael Tresoikas 

Randall Cream WRT 120

16 November 2019

Student Learning at West Chester University

Almost every student has encountered troubling times in his or her life where they have challenging periods or have had a difficult time grasping the information presented by the instructor. This is due to the structure and functionality of our educational system. Our education system is set up so that students follow the directions of the teacher and receive points. They are supposed to learn from experiments and work that is based off of an expected outcome that every student should understand. In reference to Paulo Freire’s readings “The Banking Concept of Education,” he believes that students are just taking information from the teacher but not really learning anything in return. In reference to Walker Percy’s readings “The Loss of the Creature,” he states that as humans we have lost our jurisdiction but we are able to gain it back through certain ways. To both Freire and Percy, this is not learning by any means, following directions and listening to the teacher is just good listening skills and the student does not gain any knowledge from the presence of this work. Therefore, the only outcome that students can acquire knowledge on their own instead of being educated by the standards of the academia system, is to actually be the teacher and the tourguide to their own route on the path to learning successfully. Having other resources for students to learn outside the classroom will only help in the aid of their learning including biology labs, doing field work by getting out to nature preserves, using programs like Khan Academy, and giving and getting help through student led tutoring sessions.

As a biology major, a student must take 9 biology related classes, bio 110 being one of them. Course 110 consists of learning about the smallest units of life which are cells to bigger units of life which are plants, animals, and humans. Students will look at plants and animals in detail, learning about the process of reproduction and how organisms obtain food. This course challenges students to learn the basics of biology so that students can take that information and grow each semester that they take a biology course. Taking this course, students will learn about the processes in biology and what it will take to earn an A in the class.

In creating labs the students can dissect specimen that vary every time a student dissects it. Students will go to lab each week, doing a different dissection every time. They will use their scientific knowledge to inspect and dissect items that will be placed in front of them. Students will go through their specimen taking notes, writing down differences, major findings, and the overall look of the item. When dissecting items like cow eyes or animals, this will help aid in learning growth because the animal specimen is the instructions and the student has ample opportunities to do what they choose with the animal instead of following rules. Doing these labs will prepare the student for any biology related questions and will give students many opportunities to learn and ask questions. Percy references “A young Falkland Islander walking along a beach and spying a dead dogfish and going to work on it with his jackknife has, in a fashion wholly unprovided in modern educational theory, a great advantage over the Scarsdale high-school pupil who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk,”(Percy pg 4) in which he states that the young islander has the upper advantage over the student. As for the islander, he is teaching himself and is learning through experience with cutting the fish. The islander has no instructions, but only his bare hands to help learning through hands on experience.

Alongside the labs, the students who are taking bio 110 can progress much faster if they get out of the lecture and start doing field work on nature preserves. Therefore the students who go to the nature preserves will in return learn more than the students in lecture by actually putting themselves in the first person POV. Students will be going to the nature preserves and will get to witness the true essence of the biology of plants and animals. They will take note of the different organisms that are around because each organism is different depending on the area. They will write descriptive summaries of what they are witnessing and take pictures to identify what they are seeing and to compare it to other organisms. Getting the students out of the lecture and letting them experience things for themselves will be of great value and only help to grow their learning capabilities. Percy believes the role of the teacher is important but he wants students to try others ways to learn; he wants students to learn by going off the traveled road or the standard. Taking the less traveled path helps you gain more knowledge about the different perspective of learning that comes with hands on experience because everytime you see a plant or animal, most likely both will be different and the student will have to use their brain. If a teacher were to ask what a certain plant is in the wild, the student will most likely get it right from studying or if they get it wrong, it is only a learning process and will remember it next time. In reference to Percy he states “ The pupil at Scarsdale High sees himself placed as a consumer receiving an experience-package; but the Falkiand Islander exploring his dogfish is a person exercising the sovereign right of a person in his lordship and mastery of creation” (Percy pg 4). In reference to this quote, Percy states that students do not learn from sitting and listening so they must exclude themselves from the existing educational ways and become a teacher learning through experience like field work so that they have a full understanding of the topics. 

Next students can use learning such as, out of class electronic resources like Khan Academy in which students can watch videos, play learning games, and get tested on the information they know. In reference to Percy, having Khan Academy helps the student become independent from the teacher and allows the student to take back their learning rights, “The thing is twice lost to the consumer. First, sovereignty is lost: it is theirs, not his. Second, it is radically devalued by theory” (Percy pg 6). This activity is dependent on the student and the ease that they can access or exit this program at any time. Khan Academy will help the student due to the easily accessible website and by this fun way of learning. Students will use Khan Academy to visually see helpful techniques to aid them in the study of Biology.  First they will create an account through the website, then students will watch videos on specific topics including processes like cellular respiration, cell division and to fully grasp the topic that is being focused on. Students have access to thousands of videos depending on the topic and lesson that are there to help the student grow. They will sign on whenever they need to answer questions, try experiments, and to challenge themselves with Biology. If a student has to learn a certain topic, he or she can learn at their own pace and on their own time, taking their learning capabilities into their own hands. In doing so, the students emancipate themselves from the teachers, creating their own responsibilities and taking education and turning it upside down. It will take the student, and make the student the teacher as referenced by Freire “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire Page 1). Freire along with Percy believe that the student needs to become emancipated from the old ways to actually grasp learning thoroughly and to fully understand what learning means to every student, not just what their told to learn.

Lastly, students can take part in student led tutoring sessions which are outside the classroom and involve the same material as the classroom. They will take the initiative to teach the curriculum that is taught in biology classes. Students will switch each week from teacher to student because most of the learning will be received when the students are teaching. These sessions will happen after every class so that the information is still fresh in the students mind. The sessions are there to help the student teach, which will help to increase the knowledge potential of the student. In doing so, they will be able to understand the subject or topic in a different way from the lecture. The sessions are a voluntary decision but will help boost the information and the confidence in the student. Every tutoring session will be different depending on the lesson, helping to enhance the knowledge of the student. According to Percy, “(There is always, of course, the direct recovery: A student may simply be strong enough, brave enough, clever enough to take the dogfish and the sonnet by storm, to wrest control of it from the educators and the educational package)”(Percy pg 5), Percy touches on the basis of this idea that a student can remove themselves from the traditional education system. When they do that, they create a new way of learning in which the student is teaching and retaining more information rather than sitting and taking in information from someone else. This involvement will help the student become a teacher because of the new knowledge that they are gaining.

In conclusion, students may take the initiative to do what they can do to emancipate themselves from the old ways of our education system. Having students do something other than lecture will help tremendously because they will be the ones doing the work unlike lectures where teachers tell us information to learn. Students will be doing biology labs where they can dissect animals and specimen that will be different every time. Going and seeing the plants and animals at nature preserves, doing work and watching videos on programs like Khan Academy, and having student led tutoring sessions. In doing so, students will prosper with the new learning ways, having the students take the stand and do experiments and be the person to make the instructions will be a big asset to the student in the world, only raising our students up to be confident and passionate leaders. 

Praise: I think your essay is very good, it has references, it explains the topic, and it is supported.
Criticism: I would try to explain your examples more to help thoroughly understand it.
Percy: I think your references are good but I would add more references to help support your claim.

Positive: I think your thesis statement was written very well and your ideas are well formulated.
Constructive: I would add more sentences in the beginning of your paragraph about what your introducing.
Percy: I think your references to Percy are good, but I would add more to help support your essay.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KgIbluexLXXA6aoqGPw7D8Ep8LYdL5TeEMaRW9rC2kI/edit

Positive: I think your topic is very good, I think the points in which students can learn other than the lecture are very good.

Negative: I would add more quotes from Percy’s work to help support your claim better.

Percy: I think your use of percy is very good but I would try to add more, to tie it in with your topic.

Positive: I think that your on topic, your quotes are relevant to your topic and your on the right track with everything.

Negative: I think your four main points are good but I might try to change the one about the student led classes. Try to make it more personal.

Use of Percy: I think you use Percy’s work very well but try to explain the quote more through your sentences.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zr1Syln4yKym1axcYw9aLWUVbpRfp8SbN2Wdt-jcVHY/edit

Criticism: Personally I would use different quotes and ideas from Percy to support your claim. Adding more will be very beneficial.

Praise: Personally, I think your thesis is very strong, your sub-points are very supportive of your thesis and I think you should do well with elaborating on it. 

Use of Percy: You use quotes from Percy very well, I think adding more quotes will help aid in the support.

Criticism: Personally I think your thesis was excellent but I would elaborate on it more, since you have a lot of information for your sub-points.

Praise: I think your thesis is very strong, and your sub-points are excellent.

Use of percy: I think your use of percy was excellent, you included quotes and words as textual evidence to support your claim which definitely made your thesis stronger.

Topic 1:
Thesis Statement: Throughout school we have many classes that are not needed for our degree but taking courses that are different from your major will help enforce students to engage in their academic life to really think about what they want and if the field they picked was right for them.

Subpoint:

Sub-point 1: With taking many classes that may be necessary for your major will only help the students learn what they are interested in and not interested in.

Sub-point 2: Having such a broad horizon of classes will give students and appreciation for every class and major that they might of thought differently about.

Quote: 

Quote 1: “Their hope has something to do with their own role as tourists in a foreign country and the way in which they conceive this role.” (Percy Page 2)

Quote 2:  “To put it bluntly: A student who has the desire to get at a dogfish or a Shakespeare sonnet may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the educational package in which it is presented.” (Percy Page 4)

Group: Samantha, Meghan

In our discussion group we talked and compared Percy to Freire and how both have different perspectives on learning. We stated how Percy wants us to learn outside the classroom and how Freire explains the interaction of students, teachers and the learning process. As Percy references, he wants us to learn outside the classroom, learning from experiences and taking things in while in the moment. Learning to take a moment to regroup to remember what you learned is an important process because realizing it is very important because you can get mixed up in your learning process and misunderstand everything your learning.  As Freire references, he wants us to learn in the classroom through teachings. Through both of these people, all of us in the group realize that we can learn from different ways depending on every person, but as students we don’t always realize the different ways to learn. These two writers help us realize how many different ways there are to learn in life.

Group: Kyle, Michael R, and Timothy

In my discussion group we discussed how Walker Percy states that when a person goes to visit the grand canyon their only getting one millionth of its value versus the person who visited it for the first received the full value of it. In our group, we discussed how the value depreciates with every person. In the group we talked about, that if there is a small restaurant that is good and no one knows about, the person who discovered it, gets the full value and it feels amazing because it’s like that person discovered a secret gem, but as it gets bigger, the value decreases. Therefore, even if the restaurant gets big, the value will still go down but will not go down any further because there is a point where the value plataus. There also can be a restaurant that is big but still good, in conclusion we believe that value relies on people’s perception and how they view it.

Michael Tresoikas

Randall Cream

WRT 120
03 October 2019

Students Learning at West Chester University

Throughout history, classrooms and teachers have been thought of as the ideal setting for learning and success. Many individuals, believe, to achieve academic success, you must choose this route. During my years in school thus far, I have always learned with the help of a teacher or educator. As I grow and become more mature, though, I realize that this is not the only way I can achieve academic excellence. In regards to Freire, his beliefs are that the standards for education are very simple. Teachers should be there to guide and help but the ultimate outcome should be left up to the student. The student must take responsibility for their success and what they need to do to achieve this. In order to do this students need to take the initiative to communicate with others, learning from them.

In the typical classroom, the teacher is the person that goes over the information with the hopes that the students’ are retaining it, as referenced by Freire, “ the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply” (Freire page 1). In actuality, most students are not understanding it or retaining it due to their attention span, as well as boredom. In my past experiences in school and in the classroom, I have found that I learn best when I am communicating with others and learning as a group. Therefore students enjoy talking to each other and teaching one another as opposed to having a professor go over the material and the student possibly not retaining the information. This works well because the students understand each other, which in turn, can help boost moral. Students generally feel at ease when they are with their peers because they do not feel as intimidated which could inhibit their learning capabilities. When students talk to each and go over work, it helps them to retain the information and create a deeper bond with their peers.

As referenced by Freire he states how students have no say in anything and how teachers are everything in the learning environment. As stated “The point of departure of the movement lies in the people themselves. But since people do not exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement must begin with the human-world relationship” (Freire page 6). Frieire is expressing his beliefs about how students have no say in their own life, their own decisions, and their education. Due to the circumstances of our education system, students have no say, so allowing students to meet weekly will allow them to utilize their skills that they were stripped of. Therefore, implementing communication groups will help students prepare and thrive in school. Students should be assigned to groups in the beginning of the year and should meet every week to talk about what they obtained in class. Doing so will help students convey what they learned, helping each student teach the subject, letting them know if they are well-versed in it. Also,doing so will give students the opportunity to hear different perspectives and information they failed to obtain during class.

Alongside the weekly meetings, students will communicate outside of the classroom on a video project, of which they will work together. The video will consist of the students working together and using their creative side to help in the aid of learning. The video will be a project that will be about what the students learned in class, then taking the subject and expanding on the subject to show that the students are understanding it. As stated by Freire “The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed”(Freire page 2). Having this group video assignment will give students the opportunity to express their creativity which they aren’t able to use.

In conclusion, students do not only learn in the classroom which has been done for decades but can learn successfully in many other ways. Students must be the one to empower and liberate themselves of the professor and the old ways of teaching ways. They can learn quicker, more efficiently from one another and to help retain the information better. Another form of learning is to actually do it, this is why hands on educating is an effective way of teaching. When you are physically doing something, you are learning it without even realizing. Lastly, we can get insight from each other about their past and learn from their mistakes. In reference to Freire, the role of the student is up to them and they have the freedom to change the learning process, they can form new ways of learning to emancipate themselves from the oppressor.

Writing Project Topic 2

Throughout history, classrooms and teachers have been thought of as the ideal setting for learning and success. Many individuals, believe, to achieve academic success, you must choose this route. During my years in school thus far, I have always learned with the help of a teacher or educator. As I grow and become more mature, though, I realize that this is not the only way I can achieve academic excellence. In regards to Freire, his beliefs are that the standards for education are very simple. Teachers should be there to guide and help but the ultimate outcome should be left up to the student. The student must take responsibility for their success and what they need to do to achieve this. In order to do this students need to take the initiative to communicate with others, learning from them, gaining from hands on experiences, and lastly with the help from parents and past life lessons.

In the typical classroom, the teacher is the person that goes over the information with the hopes that the students’ are retaining it. In actuality, most students are not understanding it or retaining it due to their attention span, as well as boredom. In my past experiences in school and in the classroom, I have found that I learn best when I am communicating with others and learning as a group. Therefore students enjoy talking to each other and teaching one another as opposed to having a professor go over the material and the student possibly not retaining the information. This works well because the students understand each other, which in turn, can help boost moral. Students generally feel at ease when they are with their peers because they do not feel as intimidated which could inhibit their learning capabilities. When students talk to each and go over work, it helps them to retain the information and create a deeper bond with their peers. 

Hands on learning is a very common form of learning especially in past decades. Many of our parents and grandparents learned trades and skills by actually performing them and did not learn them in a classroom. As stated by Paulo Freire  in “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education”, “ The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world”(Freire page 2). What he is stating here, is even though students are taking “deposits” (information) in, the less likely they are to be able to form conscious decisions regarding the world around them. At West Chester as well as many other schools, we have majors like nursing and many others which take the students into the workplace and gives them hands on experiences, such as clinical in a hospital setting, which will help them grow and learn more productively. With real scenarios, students learn life lessons as well as from each other and their mistakes. As these students work with each other, they are learning how to interact with each other socially, problem solve, and work efficiently.

Lastly, learning from accounts in history and past experiences, can help prepare students for life experiences and in the classroom. When we talk and listen with our parents, peers, and relatives we do not only gain information but we also learn from their past mistakes. Speaking with them and listening to their stories about life experiences, can prepare us for the future. We can only hope that we will not only learn from their mistakes but also gain the knowledge on how to become more successful. In reference to Paulo Freire, he makes a quote about how “Hence, it affirms women and men as beings who transcend themselves, who move forward and look ahead, for whom immobility represents a fatal threat, for whom looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future” (Freire page 6). Therefore, similar to this quote, the more we can learn from our past, the better prepared we will be for the future. 

In conclusion, students do not only learn in the classroom which has been done for decades but can learn successfully in many other ways. Students must be the one to empower and liberate themselves of the professor and the old ways of teaching ways. They can learn quicker,  more efficiently from one another and to help retain the information better. Another form of learning something is to actually do it, this is why hands on educating is an effective way of teaching. When you physically doing something, you are learning it without even realizing. Lastly we can get insight from each other about their past and learn from their mistakes. In reference to Freire, the role of the student is up to them and they have the freedom to change the learning process, they can form new ways of learning to emancipate themselves from the oppressor.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sTQBg2IgwIG1u6HWha1FO6P3xX_T2YpCaHDo1ftQ34Y/edit

Topic 2:

-Thesis: In a higher education setting a professor’s role is to educate and to prepare the student for academic success. In regards to Freire, students should become independent from the professor. To succeed at West Chester, they need to experience, learn, and set goals for themselves, not being helped or taught by the professor.

Quote:

-“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor”

-“Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.”

Topic: 1

Thesis: Reimagining West Chester with dorms or academic buildings in different areas would completely alter the outcome of how students work and play. Having the difference between academic and social is an important key in the foundation of education. Having this separation of the two is a small choice but has a great impact on college kids.

Quote:

“The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not “marginals,” are not people living “outside” society. They have always been “inside”—inside the structure which made them “beings for others.”

“Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.”

Group: Samantha pawluczyk , Meghan Kidd, and Laura Mcgroay

In our discussion group we talked about how most of us learn better by hands on experiences. Along with hands on experience most students learn a lot from their mistakes. We also discussed how we learn a lot from trial and error because we realize what was right and wrong. On the other hand, most teachers believe that students learn best from sitting in lectures and teaching us but for students that’s not the case. The problem with students sitting in class and listening to teachers talk is that students are not retaining the information. Most kids are afraid to fail tests and quizzes so they learn the information for the test and quickly forget the information after the test, not gaining any knowledge but only trying to ace the test. We discussed that everyone is different and has different studying tips, so visual learning and experience may not work for everyone but for our group it helps us.